108 Unknown Objects

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Biography

About the work

Historical background

LIN Huang-Ti was born in Tainan, Taiwan in 1971. He graduate from the Department of Fine Arts, National Institute of the Arts （re-schemed to be the Taipei National University of the Arts today） in 1995, and obtained a master’s degree from the Graduate Institute of Plastic Arts, Tainan National University of the Arts in 2002. The artist enrolled in the Doctoral Program in Art Creation and Theory, Tainan National University of the Arts in 2004. Since 2000, he began to run the Paint House Studio in Tainan.

Lin bagged the grand prize of the 1st Taipei Arts Awards in 2001. Over the years, the artist has not only released his works at the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Hong- Gah Museum in Taipei, but is also an active member of the arts and cultural community in southern Taiwan. A number of his important solo exhibitions, such as By the Way, About Art Recycling, and Cluster Sample, were held in southern galleries. His works of the same titles were also released there. This shows that he is dedicated to building a career in the south. Lin’s career development is actually deeply related to his “Paint House Studio,” through which he expresses concerns over the production and the operation system of art. The artist emphasizes the “arrangement of objects in space and context, as well as the reproduction of meaning.” From his earlier series like Unknown Objects and Cluster Sample to recent ones, such as Logistics released at the IT PARK in Taipei, Lin has always dedicated to the reshuffling of objects, symbols and images. He tries to discover ways to “misread” or “re-read” things from existing samples, and calls his subject matters deriving from such cluster samples “the unknown” or “the other.” This is how the artist trans-reads reality and re-identifies himself.

The play of cultural symbols and the production and rethinking of meanings are keys to 108 Unknown Objects. Aliens and unidentified flying objects（UFOs）, the two most common elements in the artist’s works, represent the unknown others and our prejudiced impressions of such others. How accurate can our understanding be, if we only try to identify the unfamiliar based on fragmented knowledge, or even out of sheer imaginations? While the 108 symbols in this artwork seem like identifiable cluster examples, “the artist really aims to remind us that all suspicious things can look reliable when they are presented as the reliable, time and again.”

“Alternative spaces” first appeared in Taiwan in the 1990s. Since 2000, such spaces have grown to be more diverse. The younger generation especially highlights the “alternativeness” of the places they founded or operate, and aims to provide a space for exchange of ideas and joint artistic practices other than display of artworks. This suggests that the contemporary art community in Taiwan have been seeking paths to practicing art outside of the government institutions, fine arts museums and commercial galleries. More or less, by joining alternative spaces, artists can try to escape conventions and find new possibilities in art.

LIN Huang-Ti founded the Paint House Studio in 2000. Artist YANG Tsun-Chih who also works in the field of architecture proposed to “remodel” the studio in 2002, making it more than just an exhibition space. Lin therefores reexamined the organic relationship between “people” and “space” and how artists’ labor and other artistic activities may become part of a work of art. The studio also held forums to encourage exchanges among “artwork ← →artist ← →viewers / art group ← →community residents.” It is through such activities that an artist can participate more actively in society and give back to it through art. To Lin, this is not only the goal of an alternative space, but also a core concept in his artistic world.